Dennis Cruz is a vital Los Angeles poet and artist. His signature live reading style has placed an indelible stamp on the poetry and lives of the thousands of people that have seen him give voice to his work. To say Dennis Cruz is a live poet is to only insinuate a fraction of the meaning of the word. He is a practitioner of the experience, the improvisational, the essence of poem as a means to understanding self, pain, loss, and transcendence. Born in Costa Rica and brought to the United States as a young boy, he inhabits the voice of the perpetual outsider and the purely American dissident. He lives in Northeast Los Angeles with his family.